The Holy Spirit

He Stood Surety for Us

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. – John 13:1

The love of Jesus Christ in the past has been attested by many deeds of love. That He loved us He proved by the fact that He stood surety for us when the covenant was made, and entered into stipulations on our behalf that He would fulfill the broken law, and that He would offer satisfaction to the justice of God, which had been provoked. In the fullness of time, He took upon Himself our nature. What higher proof of love than that? In that nature He lived a life of blameless service, in that nature He died a death in which all the weight of divine vengeance for sin was compressed into a few hours of bodily and spiritual anguish. Now that He lives exalted in the highest heaven, He is still His people’s servant, interceding for them, representing them at the right hand of God, preparing a place for them, and by His mighty Spirit fetching them out from the mass of mankind, and preparing them for the place which He has prepared for them in glory. All these proofs show indeed, my dear brethren and sisters, how in the past Jesus Christ has loved His people. Grasp it, I pray you, now, for a minute, grasp it! realize it by putting out the hand of individual faith, and saying, “He loved me in those hoary ages; He loved me ere time began to be counted, and days and years were first mapped out; He loved me ere He had made a star or given light to the sun; He loved me, yes, me in particular, me with a speciality, me as much as any of those on whom His heart is set.” …having loved His own, He loved you, even you. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0810.cfm

An Encouraging Truth

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. – John 3:16

It is certain, beloved brethren, that faith in the heart always precedes love. We first believe the love of God to us before we love God in return. And, oh what an encouraging truth this is. I, a sinner, do not believe that God loves me because I feel I love Him, but I first believe that He loves me, sinner as I am, and then having believed that gracious fact, I come to love my Benefactor in return. Perhaps some of you seekers are saying to yourselves, “Oh, that we could love God, for then we could hope for mercy.” That is not the first step. Your first step is to believe that God loves you, and when that truth is fully fixed in your soul by the Spirit, a fervent love to God will spontaneously issue from your soul, even as flowers willingly pour forth their fragrance under the influence of the dew and the sun. Every man that ever was saved had to come to God not as a lover of God, but as a sinner, and to believe in God’s love to him as a sinner. We all wish to take money in our sacks when we go down hungry to this Egypt to buy the bread of life; but it must not be; heaven’s bread is given to us freely, and we must accept it freely without money and without price. Do you say, “I do not feel in my heart one good emotion; I do not appear to possess one good thought; I fear I have no love to God at all.” Do not remain in unbelief until you feel this love, for if you do, you will never believe at all. You ought to love God, it is true, but you never will till you believe Him, and especially believe in His love as revealed in His only begotten Son. If you come to God in Christ and believe this simple message (2 Corinthians 5:19): “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them,” you shall find your heart going out after God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1008.cfm

Life in the Son of God

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, prayer, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. – 1 John 5:12

Not believing in Jesus Christ is the condemnation emphatically. “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light.”…If such things were spoken concerning some people in Africa or New Zealand, you ought to be concerned about these miserable souls, though they are so far away; but they are spoken about some of you: some of you are dead. Is not this terrible? Oh, if by some touch of an angel’s wand our bodies should all become as our souls are, how many corpses would fill these aisles, and crowd these pews! John once wished for Gaius, that his body might prosper and be in health even as his soul prospered. Now, suppose our bodies were to prosper just as our souls do! Why, there would sit in one place a living woman, and side by side with her a dead husband; further on, a living child, and then a dead grey headed grandsire. Oh! what a sight this place would be! We should hasten to gather up our skirts, those of us who are alive, and say, “Let us begone! How can we sit side by side with corpses?” The effect would be startling to the last degree, and yet, most probably, the spiritual fact does not disturb us at all; we know it to be true, but we take it as a matter of course, and we go our way with scarce a prayer for our poor dead neighbors.

What I think we should do towards dead souls is this-we should pity them…Ought not this to make us pray for them: “Eternal Spirit, quicken them! They cannot have life unless they have the Son of God. O bring them to receive the Son of God”? Beloved, in connection with such prayer, be diligent to deliver the quickening message, “Believe, and live.” “Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

Damned

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

…and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. – 1 John 5:12

Thou must have Christ, for He is the life of the soul, and without Him thou art dead in sin. “Oh! but,” perhaps you may say, “I have aways lived a chaste, upright, moral life; I have been attentive to religious duties; I could allege many particulars which might go to prove that I live unto God.” Ay, but all thy particulars, however well they might be alleged, would prove nothing in the teeth of such a text as this, “He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.”

“He that believeth not shall be damned.” With all his excellencies and moralities, with all his baptisms and his sacraments, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” There is no middle place, no specially reserved and superior abodes for these noble and virtuous unbelievers. If they have not believed, they shall be bound up in bundles with the rest, for God has appointed to unbelievers their portion with liars, and thieves, and whoremongers, and drunkards, and idolaters. Beware, ye unbelievers, for your unbelief will be to the Judge Himself, at the great assize, and to the attendant angels most condemning evidence against you. “Take him away; Christ has not known him, and he has not known Christ; he had not the Son, and he shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” Eternal Spirit, quicken them! They cannot have life unless they have the Son of God. O bring them to receive the Son of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

A Very Astounding Crime

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, prayer, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit, the unbelieving life Leave a comment

…and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. – 1 John 5:12

Let me tell you that for a hearer of the gospel not to believe on the Son of God must be, in the judgment of angels, a very astounding crime. How they must marvel when they see that God was made flesh to redeem the sons of men, and yet men do not believe in the incarnate Saviour! The “faithful saying, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners,” is not depended upon by tens of thousands; though “it is worthy of all acceptation,” yet the mass of mankind give it no acceptation. What must angels think of such men? They no doubt understand the reason of it, that the mind is so perverted and corrupt that manhood is nothing better than a reeking sepulcher. Unbelief of the gospel is the great damning sin of man; the not laying hold of Jesus is the sin of sins.

Thou must have Christ, for He is the life of the soul, and without Him thou art dead in sin. “Oh! but,” perhaps you may say, “I have aways lived a chaste, upright, moral life; I have been attentive to religious duties; I could allege many particulars which might go to prove that I live unto God.” Ay, but all thy particulars, however well they might be alleged, would prove nothing in the teeth of such a text as this, “He that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” I tell thee, moralist, what thou art; thou art a corpse well washed and decently laid out, daintily robed in fair white linen, sprinkled plenteously with sweet perfumes, and wrapped in myrrh, and cassia, and aloes, with flowers wreathed about thy brow, and thy bosom bedecked by the hand of affection with sweetly blushing roses; but thou hast no life, and therefore thy destiny is the grave, corruption is thine heritage, and thy place of abode is fixed, “where their worm dieth not, and the fire not quenched,” for, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Eternal Spirit, quicken them! They cannot have life unless they have the Son of God. O bring them to receive the Son of God. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

The Consequences

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. – 1 John 5:11

The consequences of receiving Christ are good evidences of heavenly life; for when a man receives the Son of God, he obtains a measure of peace and joy; and peace with God and joy in the Holy Ghost are not to be found in the sepulchres of dead souls. When Ezekiel saw the dry bones in the valley, I do not find that any of them were singing for joy of heart, or silently musing in unutterable thankfulness. There was a sort of peace in the valley, the horrible repose of death, the grim silence of the grave; but living, sparkling peace, flowing like a river, those dry bones could not know. Job says of the hypocrite, “Will he delight himself in the Almighty?” Joy in God is too wonderful a work of God for mere professors to forge a passable counterfeit of it. Artificial flowers may be very like the real beauties of the garden, but they lack the joyous perfume and honeyed stores of life, and the bees soon find out the difference: the honey juice and the delicate aroma are not to be matched. The like might be said of all the results of faith, which are far too numerous for me to speak of them in detail, such as purging the conscience from dead works, enlightenment by the Spirit, godly fear, the spirit of adoption, brotherly love, separation from the world, the consecration of life, holy gratitude which mounts like flame to heaven, and sacred affection which ascends like altar-smoke-none of these can be found in the charnel-house of fallen humanity; they can only be discovered in the house of life, where God worketh according to His good pleasure. He that hath the Son, it is clear, has life, because the act by which he lays hold upon the Son of God, the concomitants of that act, and the consequences of that act, all infallibly betoken the possession of life eternal. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm

Life Spiritual, Life Eternal

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

He that hath the Son hath life… – 1 John 5:12

Our text testifies that “He that hath the Son hath life.” Of course, by “life” here is meant not mere existence, or natural life; for we all have that whether we have the Son of God or no-in the image of the first Adam we are all created living souls, and continue in life until the Lord recalls the breath from our nostrils-but the life here intended is spiritual life, the life received at the new birth, by which we perceive and enter into the heavenly kingdom, come under new and spiritual laws, are moved by new motives, and exist in a new world. The life here meant is the life of God in the soul, which is given us when we are newly created in the image of the second Adam, who was made a quickening spirit; a celestial form of life inwardly perceptible to the person who possesses it, and outwardly discernible to spiritual observers by its holy effects and heavenly fruits. This spiritual life is the sure mark of deliverance from the penal death which the sentence of the law pronounced. Man under the law is condemned, sentence of death is recorded against him; but man under grace is free from the law, and is not adjudged to death, but lives by virtue of a legal justification, which absolves him from guilt, and consequently liberates him from death. These two kinds of life, the life which is given by the judge to the offender when he is pardoned, and the life which is imparted from the divine Father, the heir of heaven is begotten again unto a lively hope-these two lives blend together and ensure for us the life eternal, such as they possess who stand upon the “sea of glass,” and tune their tongues to the music of celestial hosts. Eternal life is spiritual life made perfect. If we live by virtue of our pardon and justification, and if, moreover, we live because we are quickened by the Holy Spirit, we shall also live in the glory of the eternal Father, being made in the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/0755.cfm